Site Search Navigation

Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Jeb Bush’s Iraq Debacle Gets Weirder [Updated]

By Andrew Rosenthal May 12, 2015 11:54 amMay 12, 2015 11:54 am

Photo

Jeb Bush.Credit Drew Angerer/Getty Images

When a candidate or officeholder says something completely ridiculous, a supporter inevitably claims he or she misheard the question. And so it goes, today, with Ana Navarro, who used to work for Jeb Bush, who used to be governor of Florida, saying he misheard a question about the invasion of Iraq.

The question, from Megyn Kelly of Fox News, was not terribly complicated: “Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?”

Mr. Bush’s answer was that he would have done that. He went on to repeat a variety of half-truths and flat-out false statements about the history of the Iraq war resolution. Ms. Kelly helpfully tried to clarify Mr. Bush’s comments later, but in a way that made little sense.

After Laura Ingraham, the right-wing radio host, suggested that Jeb Bush might not be sane, Ms. Navarro said on CNN Tuesday morning that she had emailed him and asked him (hint, hint) if he had misheard the question. She said he replied that in fact he had misheard.

Ms. Navarro said she did not ask what Mr. Bush heard, or what he would say now. “Listen, it’s too early in the morning, O.K., for me to be exchanging emails and being coherent about something that happened 10 years ago,” she said, rather oddly, because that’s exactly what she’d been doing.

Ms. Navarro noted that she was not Mr. Bush’s “spokesperson,” a fact that must be making his actual press team pretty happy right now.

I look forward eagerly to hearing more from Mr. Bush on this, although his team, if they have any sense, are probably advising him to get as far away from his brother’s invasion of Iraq as he possibly can.

Update: Later on Tuesday, the conservative radio host Sean Hannity handed Mr. Bush a shovel to dig himself out of the Iraq hole, but Mr. Bush decided to just dig deeper. “I interpreted the question wrong, I guess,” he said.

He guesses? If he doesn’t know, who would?

So would Jeb Bush have authorized the invasion of Iraq, as his brother, George W. Bush did? His answer, assuming he understood the question this time: “I don’t know what that decision would have been.”

To put it charitably, that shows something less than Commander-in-Chief firmness.